Joe Buck isn’t walking away from Monday Night Football anytime soon.
ESPN has signed its Monday Night Football play-by-play voice to a six-year extension worth more than $100 million, according to Andrew Marchand of The Athletic, lifting his annual salary from roughly $15 million to $18 million. The deal spans ESPN’s first Super Bowl broadcast this February and carries through its next turn in the rotation in 2031.
If the timing feels inevitable, that’s because Buck all but announced it himself months ago. He previously told Richard Deitsch that he hoped ESPN would be his final stop, saying he’d sign a new contract “without even looking at it” if one were handed to him. His tenure at the Worldwide Leader dates to 2022, when he and Troy Aikman left Fox together in one of the more seismic moves in modern broadcasting history, ending 20 seasons as Fox’s flagship NFL pairing and matching the record Pat Summerall and John Madden set for the longest-running booth partnership the sport has known.
Aikman, still Buck’s partner in the ESPN booth, remains unsigned as his own deal winds toward expiration.
Buck’s extension also keeps him in play for a bigger prize, per Marchand. ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro is reportedly circling a piece of World Series broadcast rights when they come up for grabs in 2029, and has already signaled to Buck that he’d want him calling it. In the meantime, Disney has found other uses for him too, tapping Buck to guest-host Good Morning America and front a sports-flavored version of Jeopardy! on Disney+
Financially, the contract vaults Buck into rarefied territory at ESPN, trailing only Stephen A. Smith’s $21 million — and, soon, whatever Pat McAfee’s ongoing extension talks produce, reportedly in the $60 million to $65 million range, though that figure reflects production costs for The Pat McAfee Show rather than McAfee’s own take-home pay.
By the time this contract expires, Buck will be 63 and will have called eight Super Bowls across two networks, still trailing Al Michaels and Summerall’s all-time mark of 11 apiece, but comfortably positioned among the most enduring voices the sport has produced.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.